Student Entrepreneurs in National Start-up Competition
April 2, 2018
Business Management majors William Turano ’18 and Tal Granot ’18 comprise one of only 25 teams from colleges and universities across the country to be chosen to compete in this year’s Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge. They will pitch their start-up business, Lifted Roots Vertical Farms, at e-Fest 2018, April 12 – 14 in Minneapolis.
Sponsored by the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation,
the Schulze School of 
Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas, and EIX.org, a non-profit online platform for entrepreneurship education, e-Fest celebrates undergraduate student entrepreneurs that submitted the best business pitches in a preliminary online competition.
There will be a pitch competition, development workshops, an Innovation Challenge, and the featured event: 25 teams competing for more than $250,000 in cash prizes.
Lifted Roots Vertical Farms, founded by Turano in 2017, is a service that provides a hydroponic agricultural system that is versatile, mobile, and sustainable, to meet the consumer demand for farm-to-table foods. The system grows food responsibly and sustainably to reduce the environmental impact of food production. The indoor farm uses 95% less water compared to traditional farms and is an almost carbon-neutral operation.
